Revisiting Greater Magadha

WHEN JOHANNES BRONKHORST'S BOOK Greater Magadha hit the scene a lot of us were over-awed by the scope and complexity of the argument. I wrote about my first encounter with it in a blog post called Rethinking Indian History (2009). A the time we thought it must be significant, and the new theory did seem to solve some of our problems. It was exhilarating to realise that history was able to be re-written.

However, such a book is difficult to assess, and even after several years there has been little critical response to it from the field of Buddhist studies. A few reviews, but nothing of real substance. This may be because in order to place Bronkhorst's claims in context one must have a good grasp of a body of literature and evidence that is unfamiliar to most Buddhologists. If we haven't read Bronkhorst's oeuvre, for example, we'll struggle to really grasp where he's coming from. We also need to be familiar with writers on Indology such as Michael Witzel and Asko Parpola (neither of whom are read by many Buddhologists). The archaeological and anthropological studies are also critical - and they are scattered and from an entirely different discipline. And this work also relies on familiarity with Vedic literature and on the philological problems of dealing with it. In other words, there is not much criticism because not many of us are qualified to read Bronkhorst critically.

At the same time Bronkhorst's book seems seems to have over shadowed Geoffrey Samuel's book, The Origins of Yoga and Tantra, which came out a year later. In fact, Samuel is by far the better author, his book is far more readable and accessible, and about 1/10th of the price! His treatment of the relevant material (mainly based on an unpublished book by Thomas Hopkins) seems more credible, though it still has its limitations.

At the time, I was very enthusiastic about Greater Magadha because it was one of those moments when I realised that everything I thought I knew might be wrong, and what could be more exciting for a scholar? However, I've been reflecting on Bronkhorst's book in the light of Geoffrey Samuel's book, and particularly Michael Witzel's equally awe inspiring writing (again far more accessible since he shares pdfs of many of his publications for free!). My conclusion is that Bronkhorst's thesis will not stand the test of time.

Bronkhorst, as my friend Dhīvan said in his recent M. Phil. thesis, is often arguing tendentiously. I like this word. It means that Bronkhorst has a conclusion that he is pursuing and this is reflected in how he treats the evidence. Everything is predicated on Bronkhorst's revised chronology and presented in such a way as to support his conclusions. In my view the evidence is read in the light of the theory, which is the opposite of the scientific method.

Poor Reasoning

There are some examples of faulty work in the Book, for example in the Appendix VI covering Brahmins in the Canon. Here he notes that the Ambaṭṭha Sutta may well refer to Sanskrit ambaṣṭha: i.e. someone born of a brāhmaṇa father and a kṣatriya or vaiṣya mother. Ambaṭṭha turns out to have a Brahmin father and a mother descended from a slave and is therefore low caste. Bronkhorst argues that here ambaṣṭha/ambaṭṭha must refer to the mixed caste of the interlocutor which is plausible. However, a slave is not a kṣatriya or vaiṣya so Bronkhorst is stretching the evidence to suit himself. Richard Gombrich is using the same kind of argument when arguing that the Buddha must have known about the Puruṣasūkta (ṚV 10.90) because he refers to Brahmins being born from Brahmā's mouth in the Tevijja Sutta. Bronkhorst points out that in the ṚV the Brahmins are born from Puruṣa's mouth, not Brahmā's and concludes that they Pāli authors "did not know" the sūkta (p.213). Bronkhorst seems to have a rather irrational aversion to Gombrich and it shows here in his inconsistent standards in treating the evidence. It also shows in his treatment of the humorous passages of the Pāli suttas which do not get a laugh from him.

Another example is the conclusion that because the Pāli texts are familiar with an idea found in the Dharmasūtras the Pāli texts must be late. The Dharmasūtras are much less securely dated than the Pāli, though the consensus seems to be that the written texts are originally post-Asoka. However, it is also widely accepted that they codify conventions that are a great deal older, so there is no a priori reason to assume that a detail in isolation is late because it is found in a Dharmasūtra. And the Pāli parallels are all details in isolation.

Bronkhorst is caught out using fallacious reasoning on two separate occasions and this must put us on our guard. These examples are from areas I understand well enough to be sure of my ground. It might be argued that these are relatively minor infractions, but if someone like me can spot these kinds of minor problems, what are the professionals seeing? (and when will they write about them?)

Magadha

Closer to the heart of the matter is that the very concept of Greater Magadha seems flawed. Yes, there are two cultures on the Ganges plain ca. 1000 BCE and one of them is the Kuru-Pañcāla state. The other one is not Magadha, but the Kosala-Videha complex, which is formed from Vedic tribes forced to move east by the rise of the Kurus. Witzel has referred to these tribes as para-Vedic, as they seem to have had customs significantly different than the Kuru Vedic tribes. Videha in particular retains connections with the Kuru Brahmins and the Videhan Kings invite them east. This is what we see in Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad when King Janaka invites a number of orthodox/orthoprax Brahmins to a debate. A debate which local boy Yājñavalkya wins. Yājñavalkya represents, even personifies, a major shift that is going on in the Brahmanical world. A shift away from the orthopraxy of the Kurus towards a new form of Brahmanism that forms the basis of what comes after. Not only is BU composed in Videha but so is the White Yajurveda, and the single extant recension of the Ṛgveda (which once existed in a number of different recensions). At this time Magadha hardly features in texts at all. Geographically Magadha is isolated from the major players by being south of the Ganges.

By the time of the Pāli texts Kosala is clearly more welcoming to Brahmins than Magadha, which is further east and, crucially (in my opinion), south of the Ganges. The Pāli texts show more Brahmin towns and more land gifts to Brahmins in Kosala than in Magadha. In fact, Bimbisāra gave only two grants and his murderous son Ajatasattu is not recorded as giving any. Later, we know that the Mauryas were not converted to Brahmanism, but still followed śrāmaṇa religions.

Witzel considers that the evidence of the texts themselves, especially the language involved, shows that the early Upaniṣads must predate the early Pāli texts by some centuries, although he does point out that for both literatures there is a long gap between initial composition and final redaction, and this blurs the boundaries. The early Upaniṣads represent a time before the Second Urbanisation (ca 600-500 BCE), while the Pāli texts represent a time when it is in full swing. A difference not dealt with by Bronkhorst as far as I can see. Magadha as a power, with its fortified capital city Rājagaha, is only associated with the Second Urbanisation.

"Greater Magadha" as a region, then, only has meaning in Bronkhorst's idiosyncratic revised chronology which places all of the Upaniṣads post-Buddha. If anything the region is Greater Kosala in the late Vedic period (ca. 700-500 BCE)! It is true that the idea of ethicised karma does make a first appearance in BU, and I think Bronkhorst is on the right track when he says the Buddhist idea is not a development of Vedic eschatology, or at least not a direct development. What seems to mislead Bronkhorst is the idea that the source of this idea came along only in the 5th century. I believe this is short sighted, and ignores what we know about the history of ideas in India.

Brahmins

A fact which no scholar has yet come to grips with is that Brahmins, as far as they are recorded in the Pāli texts are quite diverse: we have at least ritualist, renunciate and theistic Brahmins, we also have some that are just plain villagers. Upaniṣadic ideas and practices are not found with any clarity in Pāli, they don't stand out, but they can apparently be inferred. We never see the Buddha in conversation with a Brahmin about ātman, for instance, or about brahman, or the identity of the two (leading to mokṣa), or about oṃ, or the vedas. Where Brahmins express religious ideas in the Canon they are cosmological or related to a Creator God. The cosmological ideas are likely to have been common knowledge. The central ideas of the Upaniṣads are missing from Buddhist texts. This might be seen to support Bronkhorst's thesis, but I'm not so sure. My guess is that Brahmins maintained a relatively orthoprax exterior and kept the Upaniṣads secret for a long time--the word upaniṣad can mean 'esoteric'.

The theistic Brahmins have yet to receive adequate attention from scholars. Gombrich treats references to Brahmā as a criticism of brahman, but this only works in the specific context of the Tevijja Sutta, and what we see throughout the Canon is no mention of brahman, and many mentions of Brahmā. The theistic tendency has parallels in parts of the Mahābhārata, and may represent a kind of short-lived orthodoxy that is quickly over-written by the cults of Śiva and Viṣṇu which relegate Brahmā to saṃsāra just as the Buddhists did.

Śākyas

Taking Witzel's (1997) suggestion that the Śākayas arrived in North-East India rather late, I have developed this idea in my forthcoming article (draft on academia.edu). All things considered, we can probably say that they arrived in the decade or two following 850 BCE. That year (± ~10 years) marks the beginning of a major dry period in India. Witzel notes that other North-Eastern tribes such as the Malla and the Vṛji were known to live in the West (Rajasthan and the Panjab) by early Vedic texts, but are neighbours of the Śākyas in the Pāli texts. At this time Kosala-Videha culturally dominates the Central Ganges region, and the Magadhan city of Rājagṛha is just about to be founded.

The argument is quite involved and requires the weighing of many separate items of circumstantial evidence, but a case can be made for contact between the Śākyas and the Zoroastrian culture of Iran. What is suggested by this line of argument is that the idea rebirth is found throughout Indian (perhaps it was an indigenous belief) but the introduction of ethicisation follows contact with Zoroastrianism. I try to make the case for this happening in the 9th century BCE, giving it time to infect the early Upaniṣads. However, it could have come with Achaemenid influence after Darius claims Gandhāra and Sindh as provinces of Persia ca. 520 BCE.

Revised Chronology

One of the problems with Bronkhorst's argument is that he mixes texts from different eras and is relying on conjectural reconstructions. So he contrasts the Bhagavadgītā, which is certainly written in the common era, with other bits of the Mahābhārata (post Asoka, but probably BCE), Pāli texts (ca 4th century BCE) Upaniṣads (7th-5th century BCE), and reconstructions of ideas of early Jain and Ājivika beliefs. This is not comparing apples with apples. A century of ideological development in a milieu which sees a lot of mixing and matching, assimilation and adaptation of each other's ideas and practices can see major changes. So it seems to me Bronkhorst's method is flawed.

As I said above everything is predicated on Bronkhorst's revised chronology and presented in such a way as to support his conclusions. In other words, one has to accept the his new chronology, which places the Upaniṣads after Buddhism rather than before it, and allows Brahmins to absorb ideas, particularly karma and rebirth, from the śrāmaṇa milieu. But the reasoning is circular. The thesis only works if we accept the chronology; while the chronology only fits if we accept the thesis. The same argument applies to the reconstructions of Jain and Ājīvaka religious ideas, especially the latter which are reconstructed mainly from Buddhist texts (a rather unreliable source of information!)

Conclusions

I think Bronkhorst has made a valuable contribution to the historiography of India. He has certainly made many of us rethink our understanding of and approach to the history of India before the Common Era, and this is a valuable service. A major challenge such as this forces us to be more precise in stating our differences of opinion if we have them. There are reasons to be cautious in accepting Bronkhorst's argument. I find I am persuaded by Witzel's account of the evidence as much because he seems to have no particular agenda as anything. Witzel has repeatedly, and at considerable length, played with the pieces of the evidential jigsaw in order to make a coherent picture from them. Samuel has showed that it is possible to read the archaeological evidence as supporting the consensus chronology. Following Witzel I have tried to show that the ideas might have come from a third source, Zoroastrian Iran, and been introduced into śrāmaṇa and Brahmin culture at roughly the same time. (Revising the article for publication is my next job).

Another plus is that Bronkhorst has made it abundantly clear that Buddhism can no longer be studied in isolation, but is a branch of Indology. Ignorance of archaeology and material culture (the gist of Greg Schopen's critique of Buddhist studies as a subject) is no longer acceptable. The Late Vedic literature--the Epics, Early Upaniṣads, Brāhmaṇas, Dharmasūtras, Dharmaśastras and even the Gṛhyasūtras--is starting to look more relevant in understanding early Buddhism. Early Buddhism existed in a context and we have been overlooking, or over-simplifying this context for too long. The downside of this is that an already complex subject appears to become an order of magnitude more complex. And this at a time when we are just beginning to make use of the Chinese parallels to the Pāli Nikāyas and discover the influence of Central Asia in transmitting Buddhist to the East. And this also at a time when Buddhist studies is dying out as an academic subject in the UK.

So far as I am aware, no scholar has adopted Bronkhorst's revised chronology. And the whole thesis depends on acceptance of the chronology. It may be that more time is required for scholars to assimilate Bronkhorst's work, and to provide a critique. But in the meantime there are some obvious flaws in it that should make the reader wary of just accepting what he says uncritically.

I want to conclude with a coda on critical discourse. Not so long ago I was speaking to a prominent long time Buddhologist and they remarked that criticising someone else's work in print was coming to be seen as unacceptable. Certainly in the US where tenure depends on a positive reaction to one's work, critical dialogue is dwindling. Journals have apparently refused to publish critical articles.  If the refutation aspect of conjecture and refutation is abandoned, then progress in knowledge inevitably goes awry. Just look at economics!

~~oOo~~

Bronkhorst, Johannes. 2007. Greater Magadha : Studies in the Culture of Early India. Leiden: Brill.

Reviews

• Cort, John E. 2007. Religious Studies Review. 
• Neelis, Jason. 2008. J. of the Royal Asiatic Society.
• Wynne, Alexander 2011. H-Buddhism

If you know of other reviews drop me a line.

Semmelweis Reflex

Ignatius Semmelweis
1818-1865

ONE OF THE REAL BENEFITS of living in the UK is the BBC, a non-commercial network of TV and Radio stations. I'm a fan of Radio Four which is fairly high-brow in its approach to culture and science. Some years ago I learned about Ignatius Semmelweis on Radio Four.

Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician working in Vienna in the mid-19th century. His claim to fame is that he realised that doctors were spreading Childbirth Fever to women during childbirth, a disease which was frequently fatal. He recommended that doctors wash their hands in a chlorine solution before attending to each patient. In particular he made interns in his hospital who had been dissecting cadavers wash their hands before touch living patients. He obtained a definite decline in cases of Childbirth Fever and saved many lives. However, despite the clear benefits, his idea was so radical and preposterous that until Louis Pasteur established 'germ theory' in the 1870's, after Semmelweis had died, his hygienic practices were not widely taken up. Semmelweis published his findings in medical journals of the day, and wrote about this theory in a book, but made little headway. It's thought that doctors found his theory unbelievable. Trust in empiricism was still relatively new amongst scientists, and in those days doctors were not scientists. At the same time doctors were gentlemen and found the very idea that their hands were "dirty" and caused disease unseemly and unbecoming.

Today there was a magazine program which included Joanna Kavenna who published a novel, The Birth of Love, on the themes of childbirth and motherhood. Semmelweis is a character in the novel. While being interviewed on the subject of creatively she mentioned something called the Semmelweis Reflex. The Semmelweis reflex is a knee jerk rejection of a new idea because it is unfamiliar. There's a nice definition on Wikipedia:

Semmelweis Reflex (or effect) "is a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs or paradigms."

It's so easy to feel that we understand things. With understanding comes a feeling of being in control, or at least not too much at the mercy of events. It has to be said that medicine is vastly improved by understanding, though modern medicine certainly has its limits. People who wish to limit the influence of science will often point out the limitations of science, though on the whole the people that I see doing this seem woefully ignorant of science and in no position to judge it's limits.

Click image to embigg

One place we might expect to find a well developed Semmelweis Reflex is in the sphere of religion. Religious people are not known for welcoming new information, especially when it contradicts there beliefs. When Darwin published On The Origin of Species in 1859 the response from Christians was a Semmelweis Reflex. Evolution continues to be the watershed issue for Christianity, especially in the United States. In the USA there is an ongoing battle to have Christian supernatural ideas given equal or better status as evolution has in the education system.

On the right is a modified version of a diagram showing a simplified version of how Christian responses to evolution have evolved over time (based on a diagram that seems to be endemic on the internet. I found it here). My version attempts to show the relative chronology vertically. In the late 18th and 19th centuries we saw several attempts to incorporate evolution into Christianity, especially after Darwin. There were those, of course, who simply refused to look at the data, refused to read On the Origin of Species, and refused to consider changing their views. What we then see is the emergence, mainly in the last 20th century a series of increasingly sophisticated approaches involving outright rejection of evolution. If the Semmelweis Reflex can be sustained over 150 years it seems as though 'reflex' is not quite the right word any more. Indeed unlike Semmelweis's case, the establishing of facts (paralleling Pasteur) doesn't seem to have initiating the overwhelming change in behaviour that it did in the case of hand washing amongst doctors.

Another classic Semmelweis Reflex can be seen in economics. Mainstream economists completely failed to predict the disastrous global financial crisis which began in 2007, and has become a depression one the scale of the 1930s. But there are a number of heterodox economists who did predict it. My favourite is Steven Keen of the University of Western Australia. He realised in 2005 that private debt was rising exponentially in Australia, with similar trends in the entire Western World. Neo-classical economic models ignore private debt, since they see credit and debit as cancelling each other out. In fact Neo-classical macro-economic models make a number of outrageous assumptions about complex systems, such as linear behaviour (the classic supply and demand graphs) and the concept of equilibrium which finds expression in the oft voiced trust that left to itself the market will find it's level. But anyone that knows anything about complex systems is that their behaviour is never linear, and never approaches equilibrium. Economists, sincere as they may be, are completely deluded about the extent to which their models fit reality. Progress in a discipline like economics comes one funeral at a time. In other words these hoary old economists are simply not going to change their minds, come what may. Our best hope it to outlive them and hope they don't cause too much damage in the mean time.

I believe that we are already seeing something similar over the issue of rebirth. I think I've done a pretty good job of outlining why rebirth is implausible, and have added some other points since publishing my blog Rebirth is Neither Plausible nor Salient (27.1.12). The case is quite strong, and those willing to consider the evidence I've marshalled on the whole seem to agree with me. But then they almost certainly already agreed and were not convinced by my arguments. At best people appreciated my enthusiasm and thoroughness. So I'm preaching to the converted, which is not entirely satisfying because it's not a real test of my argument. And it needs testing.

On the other hand as people who commented, and as discussions elsewhere on the internet, have made clear, those who disagree with me seem unwilling to examine my argument in detail and point out flaws or inconsistencies. What they do is fall back on what they know, and a literal reading of Pāli suttas. I haven't seen objections on the basis of Mahāyāna scripture, for example, though it may exist. Most of these reactions simply restate the mature theory of kamma and rebirth as they were taught it, ignoring the inconsistencies in the presentation, and say that it must be taken as a whole or not at all. In other words they are having a Semmelweis Reflex.

The point is that neither side seem to be really thinking about the issues and weighing the evidence. They're just taking sides because it fits their ideology or doesn't. Rebirth is integral to the Buddhist tradition--it is assumed at every step. The fact that it does not seem plausible on the basis of what we now know leaves us with a difficult task. I don't think anyone has really got to grips with it yet. Most rebirth deniers just seem to be dodging the issue. On the other hand I see fundamentalism as the kiss of death for Buddhism in the modern West, because it will be seen in the light of religious fundamentalism more generally. If fundamentalism continues to gain ground it will certainly alienate the mainstream of Western Society who seem heartily sick of religious dogma.

The problem needs to be addressed on two levels. We need to be clear about the facts, both from the tradition and the new facts emerging from scientific and historical investigation. But we also need to look at the level of values and salience. For the fundamentalist the tradition has enormous gravitas that affects the way that salience is assessed. Many fundamentalists have tipped the scales so far that science carries no weight. Every scholar, author and academic finds their own theory more salient than any other, though the good ones remain open to persuasion. In other words we need to try to communicate the facts, but at the same time the value of these facts. Obviously for someone like me scientific knowledge has great salience. Not only can I not ignore it, but I actively seek it out, and make it a priority to learn new things. This is not true of many religious people, and so we must frame the debate carefully.

There is also an ethical issue involved in deliberately attacking someone's belief system. One can very easily stray into violent behaviour. If someone is not receptive to us, we cannot force them to listen without doing violence to them. Making people receptive to us usually means making an empathetic connection with them first. This involves understanding and appreciating what they value and why. In order to change someone's mind we have to be able to imagine ourselves in their shoes. And very few non-religious people seem willing or able to do this.

Of course many people will prefer to stay out of the discussion. People say they are happy with their beliefs and have no desire to convince anyone of anything. Sadly this kind of cop-out see to be a modern default setting. I would argue that both religious and secular ideas are laced with an imperative to be in dialogue with others and to help other people understand your point of view. Buddhism is one of the great proselyting religions, and it's imperative is to teach other people how not to suffer. Inherent in a secular view is the betterment of humankind through knowledge. People can't better themselves if thy remain ignorant.

But this is not a call to take sides. Far from it. This is a call to empathise with your neighbour, and to treat them as you would be treated by them. Without first establishing empathy their can be no communication. Empathy doesn't need to be learned, we're all born with the ability. But we learn to suppress it with respect to outsiders and that needs to be unlearned.

~~oOo~~